Word count goal?

I think we should aim at keeping everyone we can from dropping out and the rankings would follow. In my experience, the first week is the hardest one for first timers. They have a bad day, fall behind a few thousand words, and begin to realize how hard it is to catch up. Once you have 10k or 20k words, momentum builds and it isn't so bad to keep going.

So encourage away everyone!

In years past we've 'competed' against the OC so I say whatever wordcount/ranking that has us beating them again :Db

I second that. keep writing and remember to back up your work, the importance of which I have truly learned this morning, as my entire two novels have somehow disappeared, even though I HAD THEM SAVED. but thankfully I save the first two days to google docs, and part of the third day for one of them is saved, so I just have to make up yesterdays...which I can vaguely remember. and I am still counting it in my word count, since I technically did have the words...so there.

I think last year we were somewhere in the 30's at the end of November.
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San Diego NaNoWriMo ML: 2007-2009

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San Diego NaNoWriMo ML: 2007-2009

Since I am trying to knock out 500 words or so during my lunch break, I end up using both my work and home computer and for that reason have a history of e-mailing myself each chapter as I go.

It ends up being a very useful backup system and particularly helpful if you travel (such as for Thanksgiving) and find yourself away from your computer.

This is my first year, and I'm learning all sorts of things. Like:

on Day 3 it starts getting harder. The month starts to look longer and your pages are moving much slower than you thought.

Chapter changes are dangerous, it's very easy to get trapped in a writers block thinking you can write anything as good as that last chapter. (Hint, it doesn't matter, you can rewrite it better during editing, just keep moving)

Word counts like 12,000 13,000 and 14,000 move very slow. They all feel the same (like 12001, 12002) It's some kind of rounding error in my brain. I can't wait to break the 15000 mark, I hope that makes the difference.

Competition is king. I'm driven to help our region keep the word count up. Come on team. Just a little every day, no matter what.

The more you talk about it, the better motivated you are. By now far far to many people know what my challenge was. There is no possible way I could let myself fail and have to report that to EVERYONE. No possible way!

Good luck everyone,

Well, I don't know how much you can count on from me, considering I only got 33K last year. And that was with a better-developed plot going into November. This year, I have more developed characters, but it won't really matter if I don't figure out what happens to them. Other than the intercourse. (smirk)

The weird thing is, I have it on my hard, my flash drive, and on google docs. Unfortunately, i have am waiting for a wireless connection to be set up at home (which will be tomorrow), so google docs has to wait until I'm somewhere with an internet connection (meaning school, but not in the suspicious professor class). And of course, the updated copy was on my flash drive, which currently, for some reason, does not have my novels on there, even though I have save the most recent copy of my novel a few minutes ago. Its very weird, and annoying. So hopefully nothing happens until tomorrow, or I can actually find a floppy disk somewhere around the house. But anyway, I am now just a day behind. Stupid tests that are at the beginning of November. But beginning of November is better than the end of November as far as tests and due assignments go because then they are out of the way. Anyway, I better go study. Maybe. If I don't get too distracted.
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San Diego NaNoWriMo ML: 2007-2009

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San Diego NaNoWriMo ML: 2007-2009

Technology stinks, eh?

Well I have a little motivational story to tell you all. I'm a second-timer and got WAY behind recently on my word count. Although I'm still not entirely caught up, I've gone from 6,000 to 9,000 words in a day, which I guess doesn't sound like a lot, but from where I was before, writing only about 100 words a day...Yeah.

So my word count goal is just to stay on par. I'm honestly not sure if I'm going to get to 50,000 or not. All I know is the beginning of my story. I actually have no clue where it'll end up. Though I do know that I want to last until about, what is it, third week, when characters start doing interesting things. I want to see that happen. : )

I've learned as well to just keep writing, even if it completely stinks. Something I tell everyone is to not be surprised if there's random prose about trees in my novel, just because you do ALL you can to up you're word count. Hehe...I've even split contractions. I'm such a cheater. ^^;

This year I swore i was not going to de-hyphenate, split contractions or use any other word padding techniques. Then I got behind, my my very ambitious goal of not word padding has gone out the window. In fact, one of my characters may turn into a singer, and she start singing random songs.

anyway, we're now up to 33 (as opposed to the other day when I checked and we were either 41 or 43), so I'm now starting to think that we may end up somewhere in the 20's if we keep this pace up. Which would be really cool.

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San Diego NaNoWriMo ML: 2007-2009

I'm actually pretty happy right now. I passed my word count from last year with a much more developed plot and characters (thus considerably less room for cheating, in my standards.) So I'm happy. I think as long as everyone's happy with where they got it doesn't matter were we are compared to other regions. : )

Although..I do like that taste of victory...like the gravy on top of the turkey...

I'm pretty happy with my word count too, but I have to say that it is pretty interesting to see where we stand compared to the other regions.
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San Diego NaNoWriMo ML: 2007-2009

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San Diego NaNoWriMo ML: 2007-2009